Still no word on whether he was riding on the wrong side of the street or on the sidewalk before entering the crosswalk. A reader named Bruce confirms that sidewalk riding is legal in Laguna Hills. And unlike the street, there is no right or wrong way on a crosswalk, though there is some question whether a badly worded state law allows cyclists to ride in or next to a crosswalk.

Either way, the driver should have been able to see someone in the crosswalk directly ahead of the bus.

The next meeting to discuss the proposed bike plan update in the biking black hole of Beverly Hills will take place this Wednesday, November 16th at 5 pm. If you ride the gilded streets of BH — or would if pedaling through the city didn’t suck so much — try to be there.

I’ll try not to take it personally that they scheduled the meeting for the only time this week that I can’t go.

Bike riders (with an attitude) bristle at these proposals, which would sour the outlaw aspects of urban bike commuting into the bourgeois rectitude of a Copenhagen or Amsterdam. Pedestrians – of which I am obliged to be one – just wish bike riders didn’t regard us as impediments to their speed.

Perhaps he’s suggesting that only bike riders with an attitude pose a danger to pedestrians, but it reads like an indictment of all bike commuters.

Unexamined in these discussions about what should and shouldn’t go on sidewalks, is the conviction among those who go about on wheels – either two or four – that wheels themselves have a natural privilege over those who are wheel-less, and that those who ride (bike, car, skateboard) are the betters of those who walk.

3 comments

Strangely unmentioned in the Register’s reports of cyclist Romeo Jimenez-Zavaleta’s death is the weather at the time of the incident. A storm was passing through, with extremely heavy rain at times. At 5pm, it could have been very dark, with a downpour obscuring both parties’ view.

Also, possibly irrelevant: OCTA bus routes in south Orange County are operated under contract with MV Transportation, which just last Thursday posted an ad for the position of Safety Trainer for its Orange County division.

Thanks for that information, TQ. That does offer the first possible explanation of why the driver might not have been able to see Jimenez-Zavaleta. There’s also no mention of whether he had lights on his bike; riding without lights on a dark and stormy night could have easily proven a deadly combination.

I am disappointed with the Register’s reporting on this incident so far. Usually, they do a very good job of covering serious bike collisions, but this feels like they’re just reprinting the police report.

>biking black hole of Beverly Hills… suck so much
My dear fellow, we denizens of Beverly Hills take umbrage at your tone. Black hole? Our 1977 bike plan was so good that we simply re-adopted it in 2010 without any changes! (If it’s not broken, why fix it?)

And it’s not just cycling that warms our hearts. Our city was a staunch supporter of the metro back in the 1980s…until we gently had to tamp down our own own enthusiasm. You see, our paramount concern for safety & welfare was piqued with that gas explosion, and we’ve been champing at the bit ever since to get those center-city folks out to our lovely shops by rail.

We’re so hungry for rail that we don’t want to see the subway extension take a circuitous route through Constellation Blvd. in Century City. Our most important, upstanding citizens love subways, but they’re in a hurry. Put it right under Santa Monica Blvd. to shave a few minutes off the trip from the VA. (And make our many veterans happy too!)

Because we can’t get that rail soon enough, we’ve begged for a bus rapid transit lane through America’s main street, our own Wilshire boulevard. That big meanie Bill Rosendahl was so set on appeasing his nimby condo corridor constituents that we couldn’t realize our vision for every Wilshire lane to be a bus-only lane. So we had to bite our tongue and put a hold on our support until we see a truly progressive transportation plan for the Westside.